Marijuana in recent years has been the most talked about substance for medical use, but what makes people not want marijuana to be legalized? Well many people have thoughts that all marijuana does is provide euphoria and make people feel lazy. Through a lot of research it has actually been proven that marijuana can actually help with many medical disorders, such as cancer, anxiety, anorexia and many more. Even though there has been a lot of discussion on this topic, medical marijuana does in fact help with medical disorders and should be legalized in all states for medical use. Legalizing marijuana for medical use would also with limit the use of opioids which would make marijuana helpful for limiting the number of people that end up getting addicted to these drugs. It also needs to be legalized to help with people that have serious problems with ptsd and cancer.

One of the biggest issues that is most talked about in today's society is marijuana or opioids. This discussion is being argued about so much because many people have different sides and opinions towards this. Yes, opioids do help relieve pain, but they also bring addiction and this has been a huge issue recently. Many people get addicted to opioids just simply by getting them prescribed by a doctor and taking them as told when you have pain. What the people don't know when they do this is that your body is slowly becoming more dependent on these pills and when you don't realize this you put yourself in a horrible position, potentially even in harms way. In a recent post by Graham Lawton, he states "In the US, some 100 people a day die from accidental overdoses of these drug." This number is way higher than it should be, that means in a week there is roughly 700 people dead from these opioids, this has got to come to an end. Bringing medical marijuana into the picture would help tremendously with this issue. Marijuana would help with the patients pain and it has also been proven that it is much less addicting. It has also been shown that when marijuana gets legalized in a state the number of people using opioids goes down, this means if it gets legalized in all 50 states then the number of people overdosing when go down very quickly, there have also been no reports of any overdoes using marijuana. Doctors and other people that have been around these patients using medical marijuana instead of opioids have said nothing but good things, president of the U.K. Campaign group has said, "I've worked with many people who are medical users of cannabis and I've seen some truly remarkable effects." It's been shown over and over that marijuana is helping people all over the world for medical reasons, the opioids and the death that can come with it needs to come to an end. Although it would help decreasing the deaths in the world, it also would help reduce the symptoms associated with multiple illnesses.

Medical marijuana has been proven to help with illnesses, these include Cancer, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and many more. Most commonly cancer patients have a lot of pain when going through treatment, these problems include nerve damage and numbness. As the marijuana enters the body it acts as a central nervous system depressant, taking away the pain and even increasing the pain tolerance you can take. The most common way to intake marijuana is to smoke it but there are new approaches that have been made to make it even easier to take it in. In Canada, people have found a way to concentrate marijuana and put it into a mouth spray, it is most commonly used for cancer patients. It has been shown that through the use of anti cancer drugs it also brings along nausea and vomiting with it, although these drugs might be helping the patients with there overall health on cancer it is certainly not making them physically feel helped. It's been shown marijuana has helped with these symptoms, "The use of marijuana to quell nausea and vomiting dates back to ancient history" (Ali). We need to start helping these patients all over the world that are in serious need of this substance and have been with cancer that cannot get rid of it, they need to at least have something to push them through the pain.
Although marijuana helps with serious problems like cancer, it also helps with problems mentally that are very common in the world today. These problems include anxiety, ptsd, and depression, there are plenty more that also apply. Many veterans that come home from war have or tend to get ptsd, this is a very hard mental thing to overcome. With bringing marijuana into the mix it is shown to help extremely with these conditions. Martinez, a war veteran that had returned home from being on the front lines says, "My brain's telling me to freak out because I'm missing my limbs, but when I'm on cannabis, it tells me to calm down, you're O.K., you're fine." It has been proven on multiple occasions that this serious condition is occurring within our war veterans and that medical marijuana needs to be legalized to help the people fighting for our very own country that come back and get terrified at moments. This ptsd condition isn't just war for veterans either, people that have been in serious or scary situations will relive those moments in there head and start to freak out, and the amount of people it happens to is not small, "According to official estimates, which are considered by many experts to be conservative, about 1 in 15 Americans will suffer from PTSD at some point during their life (Thompson)." People need to start realizing how serious this condition is and it is not to be played with at all, it has been shown that marijuana helps and calms these people that have this problem down. People should not be sitting and suffering, by legalizing this substance in all 50 states then these people will have something to help and push them through the scary moments they have.
Although marijuana does in fact help people that have serious problems and can relieve there pain, there are also downsides to this substance as to why it should stay illegal. Marijuana has been illegal in most parts of the US for 81 years, that is a very long time for a substance that can bring benefits with it, right? Well marijuana has been widely abused across the US for decades now and it is apparent that people are actually getting addicted to this even though it has been talked about that it is not addictive. States themselves are attempting to legalize it medically and research has shown it can help people, but what they don't know is it could hurt more than help. In a recent study shown by Berenson, he states "In some cases, heavy cannabis use does seem to cause mental illness." As these people start to use this drug to try to cure what is wrong with them and feel that they may need more to tolerate or take away the pain, they could end up even worse than before. Marijuana has been researched by thousands of doctors but there is still not complete evidence to show that this drug is completely safe. This substance should not be legalized when there are not any studies shown to prove that is harmless to people. Yes, there are worse drugs out there that can be prescribed to someone but those have been studied and doctors know exactly what is in these pills and substances. There is no evidence that shows marijuana does not cause any difficulties to the lungs or brain. Before these states, the government, or anyone else can even think about legalizing this drug there absolutely needs to be more research done so people are not hurting themselves without even realizing it.
Through all of the research that has been done on marijuana helping people with opioid problems, pain with cancer, and ptsd, there is no reason this drug should not be legalized for medical use. All over the world people are suffering from numerous issues that marijuana could help with, so why not give the people something that could take away or at least tolerate there pain. There are no deaths that have come from marijuana and it has been shown that you cannot overdose, and in another study it shows this substance does not increase the risk on lung disease. With all of these studies that have been done and the research that has been thoroughly reviewed by thousands of doctors, it should be very clear that marijuana needs to be legalized medically. Legalizing marijuana would be a big change in the U.S. but it would definitely bring much more positivity to the society for the people that are in need of it.

Works Cited
“EDITORIAL: Trib Editorial: Medical Marijuana vs. Opioids.” The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review (Pittsburgh, PA), 2018. EBSCOhost
“Marijuana Use in Supportive Care for Cancer Patients.” Marijuana Use in Supportive Care for Cancer Patients, Dec. 2000, pp. 1–4. EBSCOhost
Ali, Elvis. “Medical Marijuana.” Alive: Canada’s Natural Health & Wellness Magazine, no. 402, Apr. 2016, pp. 49–52. EBSCOhost
Lawton, Graham. “Inside Dope.” New Scientist, vol. 239, no. 3189, Aug. 2018, p. 28. EBSCOhost
GLADWELL, MALCOLM. “Unwatched Pot.” New Yorker, vol. 95, no. 3, Jan. 2019, pp. 18–21. EBSCOhost